It's Still the Economy, Stupid - Newsweek

It's Still the Economy, Stupid - Newsweek

recount 2010 - Freezing brain matter on the Tundra

The 2010 recount is fizzling out faster than a glass of soda on a counter top.  Flat, sticky, warm, and ready-to-dump; sounds like a stale beverage and MN politics.  We're ready to swear in a borderline incompetant, who happens to have a large trust account and can afford to spend it chasing political windmills.  We have a $6B projected deficit, with an aging population, and infrastructure in need of replacement / repair.

 

Do we get to look forward to more 'special sessions'?  According to reports, all the cards have been played, and now it's time to make hard decisions about real cuts, and real tax increases.  And while Tim Pawlenty gets to parachute out of the mess he had a significant hand in creating, the rest of the elected officials in place get to deal with it.  And I'm not sure they're up to the task, especially "Chauncey Gardiner" Dayton, our recount winner.

 

Oh boy...

Lawyers, Politicians, and America

A concerned citizen recently wrote:   There is a reason for no tort reform being discussed in the Obama health care bill. The Democratic Party is made up of 85% lawyers. This is why it has become the Lawyers' Party. Barack Obama is a lawyer. Michelle Obama is a lawyer. Joe Biden is a lawyer. Hillary Clinton is a lawyer. Bill Clinton is a lawyer. John Edwards is a lawyer. Elizabeth Edwards is a lawyer. Every Democrat presidential nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate). Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school. Look at leaders of the Democrat Party in Congress: Harry Reid is a lawyer. Nancy Pelosi is a lawyer. Chris Dodd is a lawyer. Barney Frank is a lawyer. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Republican Party is different, it is made up of 85% business people. President Bush is a businessman. Vice President Cheney is a businessman. The leaders of the Republican Revolution: Newt Gingrich was a history professor. John McCain was a Naval Officer. Tom Delay was an exterminator. Dick Armey was an economist. Mitt Romney was a businessman. Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele was a financial investor. House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer. The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer? Gerald Ford, who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in 1976. The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work, who are often the targets of lawyers. Perhaps this is why so many business people and physicians are conservatives or republicans.   The Democrat Party is made up of lawyers. Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick, like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history, like Gingrich.   The Lawyers' Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America . And, so we have seen the procession of official enemies, in the eyes of the Lawyers' Party, grow.   Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail? Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers, and anyone producing anything of value in our nation. This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers. Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case the American people. Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side.   Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine. But it is an awful way to govern a great nation. When politicians as lawyers begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all-consuming. Some Americans become "adverse parties" of our very government. We are not all litigants in some vast social class-action suit. We are citizens of a republic that promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Today, we are drowning in laws; we are contorted by judicial decisions; we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives. One of the main reasons Rome collapsed was due to drowning in laws. America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked. When the most important decision for our next president is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in America is too big. When lawyers use criminal prosecution as a continuation of politics by other means, as happened in the lynching of Scooter Libby and Tom Delay, then the power of lawyers in America is too great. When House Democrats sue America in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to us, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing.   We cannot expect the Lawyers' Party to provide real change, real reform or real hope in America Most Americans know that a republic in which every major government action must be blessed by nine unelected judges is not what Washington intended in 1789. Most Americans grasp that we cannot fight a war when ACLU lawsuits snap at the heels of our defenders. Most Americans intuit that more lawyers and judges will not restore declining moral values or spark the spirit of enterprise in our economy.   Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business. Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work. Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse.   The United States has 5% of the world's population and 66% of the world's lawyers! Tort (Legal) reform legislation has been introduced in congress several times in the last several years to limit punitive damages in ridiculous lawsuits such as "spilling hot coffee on yourself and suing the establishment that sold it to you" and also to limit punitive damages in huge medical malpractice lawsuits. This legislation has continually been blocked from even being voted on by the Democrat Party. When you see that 97% of the political contributions from the American Trial Lawyers Association goes to the Democrat Party, then you realize who is responsible for our medical and product costs being so high! When you have to sell all of your assets and go into debt just to fight an unlawful law-suit, then you will understand and appreciate the statements above.

Extinction of the Dinosaurs, continued

Detroit has gone through it’s catharsis (purgation, if you will, actually a ‘Car-Tharsis’).  What we have now is a nationalized auto company in GM (& to some extent, Chrysler).  We’re offered cash by DC politicos to ‘swap out’ of our gas-guzzling SUV’s.  And what do most people trade in to?

 

Toyotas and Hondas.

 

No kidding.  We have subsidized the US automotive industry and now, in a roundabout way, we’re providing cash for people to buy fuel efficient cars.  They just happen to be made by foreign car companies. 

 

Can it get any wackier?  Honestly, we’re nearly at the point where it just might be more reasonable to consider a new currency while we’re at it, since dollars will be worth fractions of a penny in the coming decades as our national debt reaches irreversible proportions.  There is no way the US can continue to bail out one industry (financial markets) after another (autos), pay for the health care of an aging population, and even begin to think about the myriad of projects that need attention (infrastructure, education, alternative energy, etc.). 

 

It’s time for those wonderful people of cutting-edge business and academia that brought us the Internet, New Media, and web 2.0 to consider other industries and how they can be transformed.  Transportation, health care delivery, education reform, everything is fair game.

 

The political domains are rapidly blurring, old institutions are coming apart, and new ideas need to surface and find traction. 

 

Otherwise, pay me in Euros.

 

---Hack

World should take on ALL Global Responsibilities

Some separation between the Obama administration and the Pentagon?  Check out the article here:  http://cli.gs/WrDZn1  Took long enough.  If we're going to ask the G20 to bear the costs of pulling the World out of it's global financial troubles, we should also ask the World to bear the costs of rooting out global terrorists.  Enough of America paying the bulk of the costs of a protracted 'War on Terror', it's time for the rest of the G20 to step up, financially and with other resources.

 

---Hack

Extinction of the Dinosaurs, part 2

Millions of years ago, the dinosaurs ruled the earth, until they met their end, and turned to oil. Now, it seems, another wave of extinction is in the early stages. The bumbling ex-Governor of Illinois has been impeached by a unanimous 59-0 vote AND was declared ineligible to hold public office in Illinois. As an influence peddler and abuser of elected office, Bloggo took his hubris a little too seriously and his filthy politics apparently were bound to surface. You can’t operate with complete impunity forever, eventually your enemies will have their day too. Now it remains to be seen if others will be taken down by this scandal, including Jesse Jackson, Jr., who has been linked to Blogo as being one of the candidates who was willing to cough up the dough for President Obama’s vacated Senate seat. I have a feeling this ugly chapter of Illinois politics ain’t over yet. In the Land of Lincoln, they’ve succeeded in sending one political dinosaur to extinction. More will follow.

Meanwhile, some distance away, a scorned and bitter self-righteous talk-show host / gas bag stole a few headlines, talking (blowing gas) about cheering for President Obama’s failure. Nice going, gas bag, really great to know where some embittered people stand in America for their country. (special note to those who believe they’re feared: that’s not the case, in spite of your over confidence in your view of where you stand in the national scene. Like a flashlight with a weak battery, it won’t be long before you’re just as dim…)

Let’s review a few simple points about this. Stop me when it becomes too obvious. 3 branches of Government, one of them is the Executive, that’s the office currently held by Mr. Obama. Like him or not, voted for him, or not, believe him, or not, this guy is the President of our United States of American. Period. This means that, for us as a nation to carry forward, to be a member of planet Earth, and to promote the peace, freedom, prosperity, and co-existence with the other members of the world, we’re going to NEED him to succeed. The Nation spoke last November, it’s his election victory we have to live with, according to our excellent Constitutional arrangement for the peaceful and orderly transition of leadership in this nation. To all the gas bag talk show hacks out there, including the grossly overpaid ones, would you rather have a Zimbabwe, where the immovable power of the rifle and the rigged ballot box brings an otherwise promising nation down?

Hoping for failure is like wishing your kid strikes out, gets F’s in school, or wishing the firemen would fail to put out the apartment fire. Hoping for failure in your elected leadership is like hoping the legislative process locks up and nothing gets done, so your economy goes deeper into the tank, your citizens can’t get back on track, and your place in the world sprouts mold and begins to decay. That’s what we really want? That’s unfortunate. It’s too bad that some blowhards with a large national forum choose to espouse failure for the country’s leadership, and a belief that by doing so, someone ‘better’ might step in and fix the mess. Hey gasbags, we’re already in a mess. We need help NOW, not after another election cycle. 2 years won’t do, it needs to happen now. Time to get over the election beating that took place last year. Move on, as they say, and take the high road (go outside one’s petty self) and promote positive changes.

It’s funny how many of the self-proclaimed ‘conservative’ sheep are ignorantly aiding a select few self-righteous talk-media blowhards line their pockets. These gasbags spit venom, hope for failure, cloak themselves in the Flag, and collect millions from sponsors all-to-glad to buy ad space for the targeted demographic. The blind and ignorant followers, many of whom are now feeling the excruciating effects of the very policy they’ve been forced-fed by the condescending money-grabbers, have to realize they’ve been had, spun, duped, and rolled over, big time. They need to wake up, see what’s happened, and realize that, like Kato Kaelin, all these blowhards can just fade back into the backwaters of the AM dial, back into their rightful place of oblivion, doing whatever tasks they were doing before they realized their long overextended 15-minutes of fame.

The point is, now is the time to put aside these dinosaurs of the former embittered, spoiled child of America, 2001-2008, while the task of rebuilding this Nation, at home and abroad, is moved forward by people who can see beyond the petty and the little and the small-minded and know that our individual success will help our collective success.

---Hack

Here's another fine mess we've gotten ourselves into

Nice economy, huh?  What a mess.  If 3 months ago you told me that airlines would be the strongest sector heading into the end of the year, I’d had to commit you to rehab.  Everything, literally everything, is crumbling at this stage.  Not only are investments getting wiped out, but industries are starting to dry up.  Retailers are going to have the worst holiday season in over 50 years.  You might have to bury your valuable in a coffee can out in the yard, that’s the only safe place these days.  It’s crazy.  The urge is so strong to ‘invest at these levels’, but then they drop to lower levels.  One almost feels like it’s throwing good money after bad.  It’s gotta bounce back, but the timing is all over the map, anywhere from ‘Q3 – 2009 to somewhere in 2011’.  That’s like the cable guy telling you he’s going to be by sometime between 8 and 5, you have to take the whole day off to accommodate, meanwhile, other stuff is put on hold.

Now that the big ‘CHANGE’ is coming, does this also mean that the automakers are looking for a little ‘spare change’ from the $700BB TARP to come their way?  Or do lawmakers simply let the market dictate and push them toward Chapter 11 (re-org)., Chapter 7 (liquidation) or into the arms of a stronger, better capitalized foreign buyer?  Arguments FOR and AGAINST are compelling.  One that stands out is the comparison to other industries, specifically steel and airlines.  While they were going through their bankruptcy periods, they had an opportunity to shed the uber-expensive pension programs and restructure their collective bargaining agreements.  This allowed companies to cut costs, resize their businesses to reflect the new demand, and implement improved technologies to supply it.  Weaker companies were either merged with stronger ones or allowed to cease. 

In the global auto market, competition creates opportunities for companies that are low-cost manufacturers.  Unfortunately for US auto makers, part of their costs are bumped up by antiquated laws that prevent them from importing fuel efficient models made overseas (where these same US automakers foreign divisions are to their markets what Toyota and Honda are here).  Figure that one out.  US auto makers are dying in their own domestic markets.  By relaxing some of the import laws, they could literally save themselves.  Too bad for the unions, who are going to get hit either way.  They can allow greater imports (made by lower paid workers overseas) or face a Chapter 11 reorganization where their contracts are re-written and thousands more are laid off.  Is this the fault of labor unions?  Not really, management carries equal blame for not implementing some of the same fuel efficiency used in their foreign subsidiaries here in America. 

And so, as a result of hundreds of bad decisions, big and small, we arrive, after a mind-boggling series of ‘left turns’ and ‘failed shortcuts’, at the point in our macro-economy where a full-scale crisis is closer to reality.  With millions of people preparing for retirement, and millions more waiting to move through the labor markets, it’s a veritable log-jam, and nothing moves (or barely budges).

Seizure, and the near complete absence of market velocity, is the true economy killer…good luck, Mr. Obama, you’re going to need it.

HACK